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As we mentioned in our earlier
overview of Snapshot caching (both in this article and in Part I), we can use History settings to manage the
population of the History table with reports at the scheduled Snapshot
times  primarily to support comparisons between the Snapshots over
time. As we also noted, we can conveniently view, or even remove, the various
stored Snapshot instances via the History tab at any time, as
well. Lets take a look at the steps involved in configuring Snapshots
from the perspective of report history.

1.
Right-click
the Sales Reason Comparisons report (or the report with which you have
chosen to complete our practice session), once again.

2.
Select Properties
from the context menu that appears next, as we did earlier.

The Report Properties dialog
for the selected reportopens, as before.

3.
Click History
in the Select a page pane on the left side of the dialog.

On the History page, we are greeted with options
for adding Snapshots to report history. We can check the box labeled Allow
history to be created manually  which will allow us to navigate
to the report involved from the Report Manager at any time, and create a
new Snapshot manually, simply by clicking a button that appears after
clicking the History tab atop the Report Viewer. We can simulate this action with the following
simple steps:

4.
Place a check
in the box atop the History page, labeled Allow history to be created
manually, as shown in Illustration 10.

Illustration
10: Configuring for Manual Snapshot Creation ...

5.
Click OK in
the lower right corner of the dialog, to apply our setting and to dismiss the
dialog.

We will now transit to the report within the Report
Manager, where we will simply execute it and so forth. We will not deal
with report properties, at this level, in the sense that we did in Part I, where we performed the same steps we
have been performing in this article from within the Report Manager, versus
the SQL Server Management Studio.

We will leave SQL Server Management Studio open in
its present positionas we take the following steps.

6.
Open an
instance of the web browser on the PC.

7.
Point the
browser to the following URL:

http://<Server_Name>/Reports

NOTE: Replace <Server_Name>
in the above with the name of the server hosting Report Manager in the
local environment. Also, replace the default Reports directory with the
appropriate virtual directory established in the local environment, if
yours is different.

Report Managers home page next appears, somewhat similar to
that depicted in Illustration 11.

Illustration 11:
Accessing the Report Manager from the Web Browser

8.
Access the
sample reports (mine are within the AdventureWorks Sample Reports
directory shown in Illustration 11 above), by navigating into their
containing folder(s) from the Home page.

9.
Click-select
the Sales Reason Comparisons report from among the sample reports
listed, as shown in Illustration 12.

Illustration
12: Open the Sample Sales Reason Comparisons Report ...

The report briefly
executes, and then opens.

10.
Click the History
tab atop the upper left corner of the report body, as depicted in Illustration
13.

Illustration
13: Click the History Tab atop the Report ...

11.
On the History
page, click the New Snapshot button (seen circled in Illustration
14) in the upper left corner, to use the newly enabled option to manually
generate a Snapshot report.

Illustration
14: Click the New Snapshot Button to Manually Generate a Snapshot

The History Log is enabled, and presents an entry
for the Snapshot we have created.

12.
Click the New
Snapshot button two more times.

The three Snapshots we have generated, along with
their respective execution times and size details, appear in the History Log
(where we can view any of them simply by clicking the linked When Run
information for the chosen Snapshot), similar to those shown in Illustration
15.

Illustration
15: The Manually Generated Snapshots Appear in the History Log

We can
thus see the action that is enabled by our setting within the SQL Server
Management Studio to allow for manual Snapshot creation.

As we
noted in Part I, the History Log,
which also allows us to delete Snapshots manually, works the same if the
Snapshots are added manually or automatically. We saw in the previous
article how we can provide for the automatic addition of Snapshots
to the report history within Report Manager. We will provide this same
capability from the SQL Server Management Studio by taking the following
steps:

13.
Return to the
open SQL Server Management Studio.

14.
Right-click
the Sales Reason Comparisons report (or the report with which you have
chosen to complete our practice session), yet again.

15.
Select Properties
from the context menu that appears next, as we did earlier.

The Report Properties dialog
for the selected reportopens, as before.

16.
Click History
in the Select a page pane on the left side of the dialog, as before.

From the Properties  History page, with the
appropriate selections, we can:

Automatically
store all report execution Snapshots in history

Automatically
add Snapshots to report history based upon a schedule:

Selecting a report-specific
schedule (by filling in the schedule details, and selecting the start and end
dates for the schedule), or

Selecting a shared
schedule (by selecting a pre-existing schedule, as available, from the
list).

We can
also make settings to allow unlimited Snapshots in report history, as
well as to limit their number to a preset quantity, in the lower section of the
Properties page.

Our
options on the Properties page appear as depicted in Illustration 16.

Illustration
16: Options for Adding Snapshots to History

17.
Be sure to
turn off Snapshot generation as appropriate within the local
environment, when ready.

18.
Exit SQL
Server Management Studio when finished.

Conclusion

In this
article, we continued our subseries surrounding caching options in Reporting
Services2005.We began bynaming the three types of caching
that Reporting Services2005 offers, referencing the articles
within which we explore each. We then began the second part of our examination
of the last of these three, Snapshot caching.

As a part
of our examination of Snapshot caching, we reviewed the general purpose
of this third caching option. We next reviewed details about how Snapshot
caching is accomplished in Reporting Services 2005. Finally we
explored the settings involved in putting Snapshot caching to work
within the SQL Server Management Studio interface (we addressed similar
settings from a Report Manager perspective in the first half of this
article, Snapshot Reports I: Report Manager Perspective), including
system defaults for those settings. Throughout the various sections of the article,
we discussed other information about Snapshot caching in an attempt to
assist in selecting or discarding this option for use within our own business
environments.

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